He is known for his prolific authorship (most mathematical papers ever), social practice of mathematics (more than 500 collaborators), and eccentric lifestyle (Time Magazine called him The Oddball's Oddball)

Prey4reign:What about Josef Mengele? He was a humble family doctor who did some breathtaking work into the field of genetics. Boy, I tell you, you murder a few million humans and the world never forgets.

So basically anyone who wasn't a project leader or didn't work alone. That was to be expected. I know an engineer who designed many of Motorola's phones between 1997 and 2001, all of which were patented by the company itself without his name attached; as is typical in that kind of R&D environment.

Prey4reign:What about Josef Mengele? He was a humble family doctor who did some breathtaking work into the field of genetics. Boy, I tell you, you murder a few million humans and the world never forgets.

You see that church over there? I built it with my bare hands but do they call me O'Reilly the church builder? Nooo! You see that school over there? I taught there for 30 years but do they call me O'Reilly the educator? Nooo! But you fark one goat....

Prey4reign:What about Josef Mengele? He was a humble family doctor who did some breathtaking work into the field of genetics. Boy, I tell you, you murder a few million humans and the world never forgets.

The fun part? We used a lot of his quackery during the Cold War. We also took every single German engineer, scientist and technology guy we could get our grubby mitts on. Time was, you could shout "HEIL Hitler!" in NASA and get an entire room on its feet.

Prey4reign:What about Josef Mengele? He was a humble family doctor who did some breathtaking work into the field of genetics. Boy, I tell you, you murder a few million humans and the world never forgets.

Fritz Zwicky from Caltech actually came up with dark matter in 1933 so it's kind of amusing in an article on overlooked scientists he'd get overlooked given that Vera Rubin was all of 5 years old at the time.

Prey4reign:What about Josef Mengele? He was a humble family doctor who did some breathtaking work into the field of genetics. Boy, I tell you, you murder a few million humans and the world never forgets.

Same vein: Fritz Haber. Not exactly an obscure figure in his time, but not one who did well in the legacy department after the fact.

/might have something to do with that whole, "father of chemical warfare" thing.//also fed a whooole lot of people

iheartscotch:Prey4reign: What about Josef Mengele? He was a humble family doctor who did some breathtaking work into the field of genetics. Boy, I tell you, you murder a few million humans and the world never forgets.

The fun part? We used a lot of his quackery during the Cold War. We also took every single German engineer, scientist and technology guy we could get our grubby mitts on. Time was, you could shout "HEIL Hitler!" in NASA and get an entire room on its feet.

We actually still use a lot of Mengele's data today, as well as some that was collected in similar experiments on American POWs conducted by the Japanese. The data from both sets of experiments is still highly classified, but the results produced data that we absolutely can never get on our own with our set of laws and ethics.

OscarTamerz:Fritz Zwicky from Caltech actually came up with dark matter in 1933 so it's kind of amusing in an article on overlooked scientists he'd get overlooked given that Vera Rubin was all of 5 years old at the time.

He also came up with the idea of a spherical bastard.... A bastard no matter how you looked at him.

FloridaWombat:revrendjim: jshine: revrendjim: Point of order: Tesla was an engineer, not a scientist.

There's no clear distinction between the two.

There is a large overlap but they are distinct. Scientists try to find the fundamental principles that make stuff work. Engineers use those principles to make stuff work.

The best distinction I have ever heard is: "Engineers ask 'how', Scientists ask 'why'.". In terms of training and mindset, it is a fundamental difference that gets beaten in early and often.

If you ask a physicist where a formula came from you will get a history of the experimental evidence and a mathematical derivation. If you ask an engineer where a formula came from the answer will be "from the manual."

I've heard the scientist/engineer difference explained this way (I'm going to using chemical engineering for the example). It's a scientist's job to discover/create the new chemical, it's the engineer's job to figure out how to make thousands of gallons of it.

Chach:She has a school named after her. Would that we all would wind up so "overlooked."

Yeah, but no chain of Bagel restaurants. That's the real mark of distinction.

Btw, I live in the Chicago area and know a lot of health/medical people and I have never heard of that place. Plus it only got her name 10 years ago apparently. Yeah, I knew who Franklin was long ago, but I was using x-rays. Most people have never heard of her, or Meitner either, and she has an element. My point is they and many of the others named could use more recognition.

revrendjim:That's a grey area. My dad was a physics PhD who supervised engineers. He lived in that grey area.

I work with both extensively. Generally speaking scientists are better at the 'vision thing' and the real fundamentals. Engineers are better at making stuff work properly and reliably and calling bullshiat on the scientists who are ignoring the fundamentals to 'dream big'. Pure terms of either type suck. Most projects go much better with both involved.